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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26850874">Destiny Pentober Day 5 - Cabal</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legacy_Fireteam/pseuds/Legacy_Fireteam'>Legacy_Fireteam</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Destiny Pentober 2020 - Legacy Fireteam [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Destiny (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:40:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,402</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26850874</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legacy_Fireteam/pseuds/Legacy_Fireteam</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A fireteam, powerful and brave, takes on the Leviathan for the first time.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Female Guardian &amp; Female Guardian (Destiny), Female Guardian &amp; Male Guardian (Destiny), Ghost &amp; Guardian (Destiny), Guardian &amp; Ghost, Guardian &amp; Guardian (Destiny)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Destiny Pentober 2020 - Legacy Fireteam [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950664</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Destiny Pentober Day 5 - Cabal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h1>Cabal</h1><h3>
  <em>Written by Grayson</em>
</h3>
<p>They had come in a fireteam of six, as per protocol.<br/>
Their jumpships crested the edge of the planet-eater like falling stars, plummeting upwards as they struggled to take it all in. The sheer size of the thing was their first clue that perhaps they were getting into something serious.<br/>
He still remembered the chuckle in Kirin’s voice, nervous but still jovial as always.<br/>
“Hot damn, that’s big. Shiny, too.”<br/>
His remark was rewarded with equally anxious laughter. They wanted to be hopeful. They wanted to be excited, even. But as the transmat engines fired up and the six of them touched down on the gilded shores of the Leviathan’s entrance, they felt nothing but dread hidden beneath their veneer of bravado.<br/>
Calus boomed over the loudspeakers, his voice like fine silk draped over a cannon as it fires.<br/>
<em>“Guardians! Welcome to my humble abode, my home...ah, away from home. Come in, come in! You are welcome guests, and we have so much fun in store for you. I await you in my chambers, drinks at the ready…” </em><br/>
Cabal loyalists leered at them as they passed, but kept their guns holstered. Not a shot was fired from either side as the six Guardians shuffled by and made their way up to the massive door of the Castellum. Grenades were unclipped, fusion rifles charged. They made ready for a fight, these six, even though they had no indication there would be one.<br/>
<br/>
They were not ready enough.<br/>
<br/>
Calus declined to mention just how many trials he had in store, and the Castellum was the first. Somehow, they all made it through, hails of bullets and the cries of Guardian and Cabal alike ringing in their eyes. It was bloody, brutal, a massacre of elements and steel clashing against steel. Alice was like a primordial dragon, raining death from above on the Loyalists with her Dawnblade. They survived. They pressed on. But they got unlucky, very much so.<br/>
<br/>
The maze led them to the Gardens first.<br/>
<br/>
The dogs took only one, in the end. Jaxon-5 fell to Aru’un, his body crumbling onto the pommel of his sword, the blade running deep into his assailant’s head. It had been the last one to kill, and his Exo circuitry made him think he could be the one to make it out there, to stave off the psionic attack. He succeeded, all things considered. Pure chance that his Ghost was in the crossfire. They moved his body to the edge of the Gardens and thrust his sword next to him, cutting a final epitaph into the tree bark above his head. <em>“Jaxon-5. Friend. Lover. Bastard. Titan.”</em><br/>
<br/>
It was Kirin who found them an entrance to the Underbelly. The fans were brutal, mechanisms unforgiving, with sentries and slime assaulting them from all directions. Still, their resident map-maker’s tracking was infallible. They made it to the next trial unscathed, with heavy hearts.<br/>
<br/>
The Baths were a cruel joke. Calus laughed and laughed, promising pleasure and relaxation to five people who had lost a friend just hours beforehand. Not one of them trusted his speeches, not after the dogs. They moved forward with caution, but once again, not enough.<br/>
<br/>
By the time the Bathers had been killed and the Baths sabotaged, Shayera was coughing up a storm. The noxious vapors and oils of the baths had caught up to her, and even as her Ghost struggled to heal her, the infection had worsened. It was crushing to watch her succumb, knowing she had made but one or two mistakes, tripped into the waters only a couple times too many. She knelt down at the edge of the arena to meditate, her shoulder shaking but gaze like iron. Her helmet slid off like dust, and she smiled as she told them to move on, black tendrils of infection creeping slowly up her face. They fought her at first, but none of them had ever been able to tell Shayera no. Not even Jaxon.<br/>
<br/>
Goodbyes were exchanged. Tears were shed, hugs far too short. Shayera loaded her gun and smiled again, waving them off weakly. They moved on without her, now only four.<br/>
<br/>
Perhaps if they had given up, they could have been fine. Too much had been lost for them to turn back now, however, and they challenged the Gauntlet all the same, rushing to make up for a lack of numbers and beat back the onslaught of Calus’s legions. His chuckles bounced off walls of gold, a lavish prison of mirth and mayhem all too well designed. It must have been the laughter that brought Caulder to his limit. He finished the Gauntlet himself, his body exploding in a mass of Light and death as he brought down four different charges simultaneously, a cry of defiance, rage, loss and pain carrying the whole of his being onto the wind. His Ghost had drained its own Light to keep Caulder going, battling back the Psion’s ethereal barrage with every ounce of his strength. They both fell at the finish line, and as the room died down, both went together into the Light. The impossible had been done, but the cost was far too great.<br/>
<br/>
Kirin’s attempts to read the Underbelly began to falter, and after the fifth wrong turn in as many hours, the three Guardians wearily accepted defeat and stepped back into the Castellum. They made camp for the night, the twin stars of the Spire lighting their tent from far away as the sky rotated into artificial blackness. Calus chose to let them rest for a full night’s sleep. After all, he so wanted them to win in the end.<br/>
<br/>
None had slept well when the sky turned bright again. Haggard and beaten, they packed up their supplies and reloaded their weapons, polished and recharged in every way they could manage. The Castellum, they knew, would be a nightmare. But there was no other way. To get to Calus, they would have to get through his last line of defense or die trying.<br/>
<br/>
They broke the Loyalists. The crests were claimed in a battle more vicious than any before, Kirin like a thunderbolt as he weaved through Cabal cutting an arc of death in bloody swaths across the field. Alice held the line at the standard pedestal, Well of Radiance gleaming around her as she melted bullets easily as butter. The three’s fury was palpable, and their enemies stood no chance against it. The doors slid open with a final, pleased laugh from Calus.<br/>
<em>“My invitation still stands, friends. My table has more than enough room now, after all…” </em><br/>
They had so desperately needed a win. Their heads were so clouded by the loss of their friends that nothing felt like a victory, but this? This was something. This was a chance at retribution. They carried that undeniable fury all the way to the throne room. Calus sat, lounging. Waiting for their final stand. He grinned as the cup spun out of his hand, the bullet not fazing him in the slightest. The time had come.<br/>
<br/>
They would bring him down.<br/>
<br/>
The battle was unbelievably difficult, but they had already done the impossible, and they refused to stand down without doing it again. Their Ghosts worked overtime, resurrection after resurrection as the legions advanced towards them, pouring down a bitter rain of gunfire. Calus stood at the center of it all, vicious beams of heat and massive explosions of solar energy punctuating his every attack. As he brought them into his realm, Kirin pushed his friends one by one out of the strange dimension he now found himself trapped in. He carried them through <em>alone</em>, his incredible speed being taxed to its limit as he dashed back and forth across the platform, taking down Psions and restraining their mental attacks. Alice held strong in the throne room, the two left behind battling the Emperor’s forces with all their might. It took hours, but they wore him down bit by bit. He would falter, they thought. He <em>had</em> to falter.<br/>
<br/>
Falter he did, but when the pieces of his body began to fall to the floor, no one had time to question what they saw. Kirin barely made it out of his dimension, plummeting to his friends from seemingly nowhere in an exhausted heap. Calus began to charge himself with energy, the room slowly consumed in a blinding light as he readied his last-ditch attack. The three friends pulled themselves together for one last assault, warriors against the sun. They succeeded. Against every bit of odds, they won.<br/>
<br/>
Kirin stared, jaw agape, at the robotic form that crumbled before him. He silenced it with a swift Arc kick to the skulls, caring not for a word of a fake. The other two followed him down into Calus’s final room, one where he promised the rewards they so richly deserved. Anticipation built. Vengeance, power, secrets beyond their understanding that they could bring back to the City and Zavala’s hopeful face; it was all waiting for them.<br/>
<br/>
Yet so was the truth.<br/>
<br/>
Kirin fell to his knees, his face a mask of awe. Alice took one look and wailed like a mother watching their child die in front of them. The robots stretched ahead as far as the eye could see. Their trial had been one of hundreds, thousands even - a mere testing ground for the Emperor’s favor. It had been meaningless to him and he had let them die for nothing but a chest. Alice sobbed into her robes, rocking back and forth as she gripped Caulder’s necklace so hard she bled. Kirin snapped out of his trance and tried to help her up, his hand being met with nothing but resistance as she wrenched away from him, her body racked with choking tears. They stood there, the three of them, for a long time. There were ghosts in that room with them. Those ghosts were many things, but they were not of the Light.<br/>
<br/>
The survivors wandered the Leviathan, looking for a way out of the hell they had found themselves trapped in. Kirin swore the tunnels kept changing, like the ship knew he was there and worked against him. It would be weeks before Alice went missing. The last thing she had spoken of was in mumbles, hushed words in the back of the group about whispers from another part of the ship, far away from them. About how she could hear Caulder calling out to her, drawing her home. They hoped she might have found something like peace. They knew that wouldn’t be the case.<br/>
<br/>
It took a month, solid, of walking in endless circles around a ship so massive it defied description, for Kirin to finally crack. He had already lost his Ghost in one of the reservoirs, its Light tainted and swallowed by whatever terrifying ichor Calus was distilling down there. His maps, the lifeblood of his creativity and drive, had failed him in every way. He had lost everything, even his friends and their love. One Titan wasn’t enough to carry him through anymore.<br/>
<br/>
As his last friend slept, Kirin slipped away from their camp. He left a note - short, sweet and sorrowful - and walked until he hit a group of Loyalists waiting around for their next assignment. He laughed and sat down next to them, weaponless, hopeless, and at the end of his rope. On the footage seen later in Calus’s quarters, he smiled as the Legionnaire's blade split his chest and lifted him off the ground, blood spraying along its edge and into the ether. He died with a peaceful air, and his spirit left his eyes like a candle going out; quiet, and without protest.<br/>
<br/>
The walk back was impossibly long. It shouldn’t even have existed anymore, but somehow, there was a way out. Through the reactor core’s winding hallways and pipes, where he picked up Kirin’s body. Through the silent raceways of the Gauntlet, where Caulder’s helmet still lay, rusting, until he picked it up as well. Through the Baths, dry and without a single Bather to be fought, where he found Shayera still sitting in her meditative pose. Every bullet had been spent, the last for her Ghost, lying dead with a single hole in its pockmarked shell. He took them both with him as well. The Gardens were the hardest, and Jaxon the heaviest, but he dragged him too, yanking his sword from the earth and holstering it, dropping his own gun to make room for the new baggage. The words on the tree had been carved away, removed by Calus’s soldiers as they tidied up the battlegrounds. The Titan wanted to write them again, but it felt so...empty to try. He soldiered on, everything and everyone but Alice now on his shoulders.<br/>
<br/>
When he finally stumbled out of the Castellum, the light felt like a knife carving into the steel of his helmet straight to his skull. He shut his eyes, wincing and taking one step forward, then another. It took many, many steps more for him to reach his goal in the harsh sun, each one more treacherous and difficult than the last had been. He made it all the same; there was no other option. His friends were counting on him for one last favor.<br/>
<br/>
Calus provided fire rather generously in the hundreds of braziers he scattered across the king-ship. The Titan would not take it, and used his own instead, Solar flames drawn from the power of his Light. Just like Alice. She was the only one missing from the fire, but he knew she was lost to him. Guardians that hear whispers don’t tend to come back alive, at least not the same as they left. His friends burned rather gently, low flames crackling in front of him as he sat, watching silently. Their ashes flew up beyond his reach, the last traces of a team he had loved becoming one with the starry sky. And then they were gone.<br/>
<br/>
Nile was now well and truly alone. As his tears fell softly onto the sea of gold below him, he made a promise. To his friends. To their memories. To Calus.<br/>
<br/>
He would stay on the Leviathan for as long as it took.<br/>
<br/>
He would kill until there was nothing left to kill.<br/>
<br/>
Calus would remember his fireteam.</p>
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